Pope Leo XIV called Monday for artificial intelligence to be strictly controlled and for its developers to work for the benefit of all rather than profit, issuing a sweeping manifesto to protect humanity as technology affects everything from work to war.
“Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity), Leo’s first book, has been eagerly awaited since the first US-born pope in history announced days after his election that he considers AI to be the biggest challenge facing humanity today.
In the text, Leo criticized the “culture of power” driving the AI race, especially in developing more sophisticated methods of remote warfare. He declared that it is “unacceptable” to entrust potentially irreversible, dangerous decisions to AI systems, setting another point between the American pope and the Trump administration, which has worked hard to reverse the development of AI.
“Artificial Intelligence now wants to be disarmed, freed from rational thought that makes it an instrument of domination, exclusion and death,” the pope told a special Vatican encyclical presentation, one of the most authoritative types of teaching documents the pope can issue.
Experts in the technology industry, academics and Catholic ethics said the document will likely become a landmark in the AI debate, a point of reference for policymakers, researchers and ordinary people alike. It comes as the day-to-day advancement of technology is causing growing concern about AI replacing human jobs and even human intelligence.
“It lends itself to people who are at the forefront of these tools and can see the amazing things they can do, to have questions about their own ‘What does it mean to be human?'” said Taylor Black, Microsoft AI chief and director of the Catholic University of America’s AI center.
Pope calls AI companies as he runs Anthropic
The Vatican presentation also included remarks from the founder of Anthropic, which is currently locked in a spat with the Trump administration over access to its AI technology. The Vatican decided to engage Anthropic as part of its decade-long effort to engage Silicon Valley on the human costs of AI.
And yet in his text, Leo repeatedly blasted the concentration of power and data in the hands of a few people in the private sector as dangerous, especially for children and the most vulnerable people, and called for external control of their work.
“It is not enough to appeal to moral principles in a vague way; strong legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users and a political system that does not abdicate its responsibility are needed,” he wrote. “A moral AI is not enough if that morality is dictated by a few.”
Leo repeatedly appealed to AI developers and the political leaders responsible for controlling them to slow down and think about what they are doing. He urged them to use moral and spiritual guidelines to choose to work not for their profit or power, but for the development of humanity.
AI rivals OpenAI and Anthropic are the second and third most valuable US private companies, each worth hundreds of billions of dollars, more than the GDP of most nations.
Anthropic founder Christopher Olah welcomed Leo’s criticism and concerns. He said that external evaluation of AI and the researchers behind it was important for the technology to “go well” for humanity because there is so much at stake – “the possibility that AI will displace human labor on a very large scale.”
“We need more of the world – religious communities, civil society, scholars, governments – to do what His Holiness has done here: to take this seriously, to look into it, and to move things forward in a better way,” said Olah. “We need informed critics who will tell the labs when we fail. We need moral voices that can’t bend.”
Experts say the text will become a benchmark
In a methodological text, the cardinal pope traced the history of the social teaching of the Catholic Church and applied its core concepts – justice, solidarity, dignity of work and the universality of resources – to the digital revolution.
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“I am convinced that this will be the defining document of our time, a profound and prophetic document,” said Paolo Carozza, a law professor at Notre Dame Law School and chair of the Meta board.
“Pope Leo offers a clear, complete, and coherent voice that urges us to take responsibility for building a world where technology will serve people rather than undermine them,” he said.
In one of his most intense chapters, Leo criticized how AI helped accelerate the “industrialization of conventional warfare” by destroying humans at its expense. He did not name specific conflicts, but he cited “contending imperialisms, between states that wish to preserve their sovereignty, and those that wish to take that sovereignty.”
He demanded transparency and accountability for AI developers so that the chain of command for decision-making for ordering strikes with AI weapons is always known. He declared that the Catholic Church’s theory of “just war,” which provided precise criteria for when force could be justified, was now “obsolete” given the technological advances of warfare.
A text on the church’s tradition of social justice
Leo signed the document on May 15, the 135th year of the publication of “Rerum Novarum” (For New Things), the most important teaching document of Leo’s hero and namesake, Pope Leo XIII. That document addressed the rights of workers, the limitations of capitalism, and the obligations that states and employers owed to workers as the Industrial Revolution progressed.
It became a cornerstone of modern Catholic public thought, and the current pope cited it early in his papacy in relation to the AI revolution, which he believes raises the same existential questions that the Industrial Revolution posed a century ago. Thus “Magnifica Humanitas” becomes the latest chapter in the century-long history of popes who adapted “Rerum Novarum” to the social questions of their times, often focusing on the respect for the work of human flourishing.
AI is raising both existential fears and visions amid a heated debate over whether it will be a catalyst that enriches humanity or a technological poison that dulls human creativity while wiping out millions of high-paying jobs.
“The pursuit of greater profit cannot justify decisions that sacrifice jobs, because man is the end, not the means, and the economic order must always be subordinate to the dignity of man and the common good,” wrote Leo.
Leo extended his concern for upholding human dignity at work to issue the first-ever papal apology for the Holy See’s own role in endorsing slavery by giving European rulers express authority to rule and enslave “infidels.”
A decade of conversation with Silicon Valley
Vatican officials declined to say who exactly contributed to Leo’s letter. But the Vatican and church officials have been in talks with Silicon Valley tech companies for a decade. Towards the end of his papacy, Pope Francis began to speak extensively about AI and the dangers it poses to humanity.
The decision to include Anthropic in the Vatican launch was criticized by some who saw it as a papal seal of approval for the AI company, which is currently suing the Trump administration after it ordered all US agencies to stop using Anthropic technology over its refusal to allow the US military to use it without restrictions.
Brian Boyd, the US religious coordinator for the non-profit Future of Life Institute, read the inclusion of Anthropic founder Olah as the equivalent of an audience with a pope with a head of state: not a confirmation.
“I think it’s like being recognized (how) this extremely powerful company is winning this race and filling vacancies,” said Boyd.
Anthropic is “a big organization that’s taking on a lot of risk and responsibility,” Boyd continued, but said the company “showed real kindness and sincerity and interest in the conversation.”
